In
"Piggy Banker" (2/12/06) the Washington Post reports that Wal-Mart is poised to
use a legal loophole to enter banking "and potentially do in that arena what
it has done to nearly every other consumer product and service it has touched."

"What's really at issue is the nature of the American economy," says Rep.
Jim Leach (R-Iowa),
who has fought efforts by industry to lift the ban for over two decades.
"If such concentrations are allowed, you could have our largest banks combined with
our largest retail companies and high-tech companies and create questions about how
credit is allocated. It has enormous consequences for competition, and I think America
would become less competitive in the world."

Congress debated whether or not to allow commerce and banking to merge before
passing the financial modernization act that bears Leach's name -- Gramm-Leach-Bliley.
The bill stipulated that there be no merging of commerce and banking. (See Leach's letter to Alan Greenspan, 1/20/06)

Wal-Mart's proposal is another example of the total failure of antitrust policies to
prevent the formation of new conglomerates. The blind ideological drive
towards corporate deregulation has freed some companies from traditional regulatory
restraints that limited them to particular industrial sectors.

High-profile examples of the emergence of new corporate conglomerates have affected
media ownership (GE/NBC, Westinghouse/CBS and Disney/ABC), tobacco accountability
(Altria/Philip Morris) and other issues.

Aggressive deregulation of key sectors has also been fueled by deal-fee-driven
mergers and acquisitions that later turn out to be inefficient
(and often have to be unwound), or turn out to have destructive consequences
for markets, investors and, for consumers, the consistent delivery of essential services.

Enron is a good example of what can happen. After gaining certain exemptions from
the Public Utilities
Holding Company Act from
the SEC,
Enron entered into new sectors outside its core areas of competence, including
broadband services and water, where the company took a bath.
The company's failure in these new areas was a significant trigger-point along the way to the company's
collapse. Once returns from these new business divisions were not what they had been
projected, top company executives began to "cook the books" to please Wall Street, especially by
setting up "special purpose entities" to hide the company's increasing debt off-shore.
Deregulation was key to allowing Enron to wander outside its core line of business (energy), as
explained in this report by Public Citizen.

One way to do this is to restore the sector-specific provisions established under PUHCA and other
New Deal-era statutes, including the Glass-Steagall Banking Act. Another approach would be to
place direct limits on corporations through either federal or state charters.

Last Year Wal-Mart started a food fight with egg on its face.
CEO Lee Scott said British authorities
should investigate Tesco, whose share of the UK food market increased to
a record 30.5% over the past three months. But what about here in the U.S.,
where Wal-Mart controls 24% of the American grocery market, more than double its next
closest competitor and more than the next three competitors combined?
Read more.

A new analysis
reveals that "Mr. Sam" paid CEO Lee Scott 871 times what it pays an average Wal-Mart
"associate" in 2004. For more on what can be done about CEO greed, go HERE.